'Fairytale Of New York' will seem much sadder this Christmas.

Photos of Shane MacGowan, the lead singer of The Pogues, in his hospital bed, were doing the rounds on social media recently. Tributes will pour in for the next few days to his brilliance as a songwriter. But there is a sense of waste, too. Dead at 65. He might have lasted longer had he not abused his body so much when he was young. He looked ghastly in those final photographs - pale, ghostly, a step away from the grave. In a way, it's impressive that he made it to his mid 60s. "People have given Shane six months to live every year since he's been 19," Pogues guitarist Philip Chevron said in 2006.

MacGowan left the world with one of the darkest and most moving Christmas songs ever written, "Fairytale of New York.' The song was originally released in 1987 and has been a stable of the Christmas season ever since. "God said I'm the little boy he's going to use to save Irish music and take it to greater popularity than it's ever had before," MacGown said in the documentary Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan.

As the front man of The Pogues, MacGowan became a huge figure in the 1980s. Anarchic, wilful and fixated by booze, he was a kind of pop anti-hero, a million miles from East 17 or Jason Donovan. The band welded the punk raucousness of The Clash with Irish folk music. Along the way, MacGowan blazed a trail with booze and drugs. His 1987 masterpiece, 'A Fairytale of New York' put more into four minutes of music than most lyricists manage in a lifetimes. The song simmers with humour, melancholy and pathos as a pair of lovers dwell on life's missed chances. 'I could have been someone,' sings MacGowan. 'Well so could anyone,' responds Kirsty MacColl. Part of what makes the song different is that is celebrates life, with one foot in the grave. It's beautiful, celebratory and sad - all at once. It echoes life, summarising something of the strange situation we find ourselves in - mortal, but aspirational. Hopeful, but anchored by the human condition. The song makes me cry, but it will be so much sadder this year. RIP Shane MacGowan, a brilliant but self-destructive one off.

Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York. You can email him at

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